A man will appear in court in west Sussex today charged with the kidnap and murder of the eight-year-old schoolgirl, Sarah Payne, police have confirmed.
Mr Roy William Whiting (42) of Littlehampton, west Sussex, was re-arrested at an address in Kent yesterday and after more than fours hours of questioning he was charged with the murder.
It was the third time during a seven-month investigation that officers from Sussex Police had arrested Mr Whiting, who works as a mechanic.
The schoolgirl from Hersham, Surrey, went missing on July 1st last year while playing with her brothers and sister near their grandparents' home in Kingston Gorse, west Sussex.
Her partially buried body was discovered 16 days later in a field about 15 miles away, near Pulborough. A huge police investigation followed Sarah's disappearance and at one stage police received up to 2,000 telephone calls each day.
A breakthrough in the investigation came two weeks after police launched an appeal for more information on the case on the BBC television programme, Crimewatch.
At that time police appealed to the public for information in relation to a distinctive pair of curtains and it is understood that police questioned Whiting about a number of new leads that have developed in recent days prior to charging him with murder and kidnapping.
Det Supt Peter Kennett of Sussex Police, who has been leading the investigation into Sarah's murder, said Mr Whiting would appear at Chichester Magistrates' court in west Sussex to face charges of kidnap and murder.
The murder of Sarah Payne last summer provoked an outcry in the British media and the tabloids in particular launched a campaign for tougher penalties for sex offenders.
The murder also raised questions about the practice of sending paedophiles and convicted sex offenders to live in the community. The News of the World launched a "name and shame" campaign to identify sex offenders and paedophiles living in the community, supported by the Payne family.
Some innocent men were wrongly named and, encouraged to a large extent by the campaign, residents on a housing estate in Portsmouth began picketing the homes of people they suspected were paedophiles and the situation threatened to spiral out of control.
However, the police, prison service and politicians criticised the campaign and it was eventually withdrawn.